


The Sixth Church

by Aloysia_Virgata



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 10, home again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 05:45:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6740962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aloysia_Virgata/pseuds/Aloysia_Virgata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re driving to Philly against his better judgment because she asked him to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sixth Church

In the center of Philadelphia is a great heart, housed at the Franklin Institute. Scully visited it as a child, climbed through the ducts and valves, ran her hand along the inside of the aorta. She believed it must power the city, pumping life into the electric lines and telephones.

“Dana’s going to be a doctor,” her father said, half-joking as he gathered the family for a picture.

Melissa had cried because the heart didn’t look like a heart at all.

 _Half those people are dead now_ , Scully thinks, wondering whether she or one of her brothers will tip the balance. Her mother’s body isn’t even cold yet but she couldn’t look at it, she couldn’t bring herself touch it with the same indifferent hands that ministered to the strange dead.

She turns to look at Mulder, tight-jawed and stoic as he drives them back north. Her mother’s final words had been to him, her only real family now. He’s got his sleeves rolled up the way she’s always liked, his tie loose at an unbuttoned collar. There’s half a can of Red Bull in the cupholder, rubbery fried chicken they’d bought at the Wawa outside of Baltimore.

They’re driving to Philly against his better judgment because she asked him to. She’d begged with the raw desperation she hadn’t felt since sending William away, a needful panic. Her own fear is the most terrifying thing Scully has experienced, even with the bar so high.

She fidgets, buzzing with the unfocused energy of her grief. Boggs had saved her from the agony of her father’s death and she has similar hopes for whatever beast had torn a man limb from limb. She wants to deal with the cool logic of the dead so that she can forget the protracted sorrow of the dying.

_Her mother frail as dried flowers, calling to the prodigal son._

“We’re making good time,” Scully says, with no real idea if they are or not. But she works in the relentless noise of a hospital and this lengthy silence has become uncomfortable.

“Yeah, pretty good. We should be there in an hour I think.”

She nods, stares at the case report without really seeing it.

He glances at her briefly, then back at the road. He doesn’t ask if she’s okay, doesn’t ask if she’s sure. He takes her at her word and keeps driving them back to the city where she’s now twice come undone.

Mulder’s eyes had been dark and angry as her bruises that first time, angry at some perceived betrayal that even he couldn’t define. And she, she’d been harder than the concrete in Strawberry Mansion. The cancer bloomed in her after that though, and spared them the conversation. This time they’re both raw as her back after the tattoo.

She and Mulder are both orphans now, a strange sort of kinship, but then their bond has never been conventional. It occurs to her that there is no word to describe a person who has lost their child.

She remembers that awful night they spent after she’d opened his mother up, read her bones and entrails like runes. Mulder sobbing in her arms in the ugly way that men cry, the wrenching innocence of a boy without his mother. Her hair was so short then she couldn’t tie it back as she held him. It brushed his face when he leaned up to kiss her. It drank the last of his tears.

It might feel better to cry, she thinks, pressing her fingertips to the cold window. But she’s not ready to unpack it all again, not prepared for the messiness of sorrow. Her reflection ghosts over the scenery, miles of industrial landscape and stars like broken glass.


End file.
